South America (Geographic Keyword)
1,026-1,050 (1,326 Records)
This paper will consider the Amaybamba Valley of southern Peru as an ecological and political frontier zone, from the late prehistoric era until the early colonial period. The Amaybamba region is a part of the cloud forest zone of the eastern Andean slopes, and is thus located where the highlands rapidly shift into the warm tropical lowlands of Amazonia. It is a region that has a complex and highly variable history, one reflecting its environmental characteristics, but often in unpredictable...
Regional Demographics: Growth, Mobility and Development in the ancient populations of Cundinamarca and Boyacá Regions, Colombia, South America. (2016)
This paper deals with population dynamics and changes in ancient pre-Hispanic societies settled in the regions of Villa de Leiva, Fuquene and Funza from the Cundinamarca and Boyacá basin, Colombia, South America. Based on these three different regional datasets, this research wants to contribute to analytical modeling development in order to understand population dynamics. Since a comparative perspective among nearby regions we accounting for substantial variability in demographic past behavior...
The Reitz Stuff: A Faunal Perspective on El Niño from Coastal Peru (2016)
For the last thirty years, zooarchaeological data from coastal Peru have provided groundbreaking insight into the Holocene history of El Niño, the interannual climatic phenomenon that affects global climate and human societies. Elizabeth J. Reitz has authored important studies with both of us on El Niño and faunal biogeography, and she served as a mentor to one of us in developing biochemical proxies for El Niño. In this paper, we review the history of faunal studies of El Niño and analyze...
Rejection and Reinvention: a diachronic perspective on ritual and collapse in the south central Andes (2017)
Scholarship on Tiwanaku (AD 600-1000) emphasizes the ceremonial nature of its capital city and the role of ritual practice in incorporating diverse groups as the state’s influence expanded across the south central Andes. Although debate continues about its cause, recent research indicates that the Tiwanaku state’s political collapse played out over several centuries. In this paper, I draw on data spanning that period of fragmentation to take a diachronic perspective on the ways in which ritual,...
Rejection or Reinvention: Rethinking social hierarchy in the post-collapse Colla polity (AD 1000-1450) of southern Peru. (2015)
The collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku, around AD 1000, was accompanied by a dramatic uprising against the ruling elite. Elite ancestor effigies placed in large open plazas were iconoclastically disfigured, while the Putuni Palace, home to Tiwanaku’s ruling dynasty, was leveled. In the post-collapse period, Titicaca basin peoples abandoned the symbols of Tiwanaku’s authority. A 1500-year tradition of ritual architecture and craft goods disappeared, and ritual practice turned to the...
Relational Empire: The Non-modern Violence of the Inka State (2016)
The use of “relational” approaches in archaeology seems much more prevalent in some contexts as compared to others. Particularly, it is most often invoked with respect to prehistoric hunter-foragers – that is, societies that are “politically non-complex” to use the classic archaeological terms. Perhaps as a result, violence is seldom discussed in the literature on relationality, unless to point out the contrasting violence of modernity itself. Yet for those of us who deal with indigenous...
Relationships between Oceanographic and Social Changes on Fishermen Populations during the Middle Holocene. A case study from Taltal (25°C South), Northern Coast of Chile (2017)
The existence of a marked paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic transition during the Middle Holocene on a global scale is well documented. Along the Pacific Coast of South America, temporal trends in the 14C reservoir effect during the Holocene show contrasting patterns between Southern Peru-Northern Chile and central Chile, pointing to significant changes in the structure of ocean currents and the origin of upwelling waters along coastal Northern Chile during the Holocene. The strong latitudinal...
Religion and power in the Middle Horizon: Castillo de Huarmey imagery and styles (2017)
The idea that diffusion of a proselytizing religion is one of the main factors that generated the horizon effect follows the research on Wari and Tiwanaku phenomena since its inception. The seminal works of Dorothy Menzel have also convinced generations of scholars about the alleged relationship of these phenomena with the Wari empire ideology and on the particular role that the sanctuary of Pachacamac fulfilled in this process. The analysis of rich ceramic and textiles from Castillo de Huarmey,...
Remembering Valdivia through a Unique Manteño Burial at Buen Suceso (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Burials have long been considered primary sources of information regarding social ranking and inequality, social understandings of ancestors, conceptions of death, diverse representations of identity and agency, and emotional expressions of mourning and loss (see Baitzel 2018; Buikstra...
Remodeling the Liturgical "Backstage" of the Parish of Santa Cruz de Tuti, Colca Valley (Arequipa, Peru) (2017)
The Toledan resettlement during late decades of the 16th century in the viceroyalty of Peru involved a series of changes in the territory for Andean people at different levels, from household to the public and religious spheres. In the case of the reducción (planned colonial town) of Santa Cruz de Tute, the religious sphere was transformed and materialized into a new core of buildings and spaces: the church, its parish, and plazas. The parish and casa cural (rectory) was a liminal space in terms...
Remote and proximal sensors for field mapping of Amazonian Dark Earths (2016)
Brazilian and Swedish archaeologists and soil scientists collaborated in the multidisciplinary research project Cultivated Wilderness (CW) to investigate Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE) locations in the Santarém‐Belterra region of the Brazilian Amazon. One of the goals of the project was to investigate the potential of rapid geophysical data collection to assess the properties and spatial distribution of ADE. About 300 reference soil samples were collected at different ADE locations. A range of...
Remote-sensing Prospection of Recuay Architecture in the Jancu Region, Callejón de Huaylas, Peru (2017)
The Recuay tomb of Jancu has contributed significantly to our understanding of Recuay mortuary practices and ancestral veneration. This subterranean tomb, which housed the remains of several elite individuals and finely-crafted offerings, is typically discussed in isolation from its broader context. To date, no formal archaeological research has been conducted in the surrounding region, but recent preliminary surveys by the authors revealed numerous Recuay and Post-Recuay residential and...
Repensando la verticalidad en tiempos del Inca: El caso de Zapahuira, Sierra de Arica, Norte de Chile (2017)
A mediados de 1970 surgió la conocida discusión si el dominio incaico en el norte de Chile había sido directo o indirecto, a partir de la aplicación que se hizo del modelo sobre la "verticalidad" andina de John Murra. De acuerdo con esta propuesta, la situación se dirimía en términos de que cuán abundante era la materialidad del Inca en los territorios conquistados, especialmente arquitectónica y cerámica, y cuánto ésta se atenía al estilo original del Cusco. De acuerdo con las incipientes...
Reply To Paulsen and Isbell (1981)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Representing and Negotiating Moche Identity in Everyday Life (2015)
Material culture used in daily practices plays a crucial role in mediating personal experiences, social identities, and wider socio-political phenomena. Based on my doctoral dissertation, I more specifically explore the ways miniature anthropomorphic figures used mostly in domestic contexts participated in the negotiation of the identities of Moche colonists settling in the Santa Valley (north coast of Peru) between the fifth and the ninth century AD. Figurines in particular seem to have played...
Representing Difference in the Pre-Columbian Andes: An Iconographic Examination of Physical "Disability" (2015)
This paper will review iconographic representations of physical disabilities and differences from several Andean societies from different time periods, such as the Inka, Chimú, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Moche. People with physical disabilities were actively included in many societies throughout the Pre-Columbian Andes. Many cultures developed their own social perceptions that benefited people with physical disabilities and differences and they often thought the disabled were more intimately connected...
Research on a Dog Burial from Rio Muerto, Peru (2015)
This poster presentation examines the place of the dog in the ancient Andean society of Tiwanaku. The mummified remains of a small dog were recovered from a domestic context at the Rio Muerto site, located in the Osmore River drainage of far southern Peru. Although dog burials in Peru are not unusual, they appear mostly in high-status contexts in art and in mortuary practice. Offerings of young camelids and dogs have been found buried beneath floors and entryways of houses at Rio Muerto M43 and...
Researching LACMA's Colombian ceramics (2015)
The study of objects that are without context or provenience, as we most often find in museum collections, is challenging. Focusing on LACMA’s collection of Colombian ceramics, this paper will present the results of research carried out by the Program for the Art of the Ancient Americas at LACMA, and examine procedures and outcomes of integrating historical, ethnographic, and archaeological data for interpreting museum objects. Colonial text sources convey a sense of the impression that 16th...
Residues analysis of bedrock mortars of the Limarí river valley (IVth region, Chile): evaluating plant exploitation among Late Holocene hunter gatherers (2017)
For an integral understanding of bedrock mortars, as a product and producer of social practices, we have carried out research in the Limarí River valley (Chile) (Fondecyt Grant N°1150776). One dimension of this research was directed to answer the following questions: were these cupules used to grind plants? And if so, what plant resources were used by these hunter gatherer groups? Do these include cultivate domesticated plants? And how does it relate to the association "initial...
Resilience, Incursion, Incorporation: A Multi-Scalar Approach to the Temporality of Collapse in the South-Central Andes (2016)
Cross-cultural literature highlights the importance of differentiating between political, societal, and ‘cultural’ collapse. Focusing largely on the short-term aftermath of collapse, this scholarship demonstrates that even in the clearest examples of political fragmentation, considerable stability in other components of past societies is often archaeologically visible. Less attention has been paid to longer-term impacts and responses. Taking the disintegration of the Tiwanaku state in the south...
Response To Marvin Harris' 'Protein Theory of Warfare' (1975)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
Resultados preliminares del Proyecto Moqi (Peru): explorando la administracion inkaica en el departamento de Tacna (2017)
Moqi es un asentamiento Inca ubicado entre las cuencas de los ríos Cambaya y Borogueña, a 2,8000 msnm, en la cabecera del río Locumba (Tacna, Peru). Las investigaciones (2012-2014) buscaron ampliar el conocimiento de las características arquitectónicas de Moqi Alto y Moqi Bajo, la producción del sitio arqueológico, las relaciones entre su población y el vínculo económico, social y cultural con el Estado Inca. Los primeros resultados, en el contexto de la hipótesis planteada (que propone que Moqi...
Results of Survey and Analysis of Manteño Archaeological Sites with Stone Structures in the Las Tusas River Valley, Rio Blanco, Ecuador (2017)
The Manteño (1500 BP–1532) of coastal Ecuador are known for their long distance maritime trade networks along the Pacific coast of the Americas; they occupied a large territory that was geographically and environmentally diverse. This diversity allowed the Manteños to exploit a multitude of resources from each unique environment resulting in distinct settlement patterns for each region. One of the least known of these occupied environments and the focus of this paper is the cloud forest of the...
Results of Survey and Analysis of Manteño Archaeological Sites with Stone Structures in the Upper Río Blanco River Valley, Manabí, Ecuador (2018)
This paper will present the results of a three-year effort to survey and document Manteño archaeological sites with stone structures within the limits of the Upper Río Blanco River Valley in Southern Manabí. The region is home to 40 known Manteño sites with more than 100 stone structures across the river valleys of La Encantada, Las Tusas and La Mocora that carve the foothills of the Bola de Oro mountain. The Florida Atlantic University Archaeological Fieldschool in Ecuador, directed by...
Results of Survey and Preliminary Analysis of Manteño Archaeological Sites with Stone Structures in the Las Tusas River Valley, Rio Blanco, Ecuador (2016)
This poster presents information on the Manteño occupation (1500 BP – 1532) of the cloud forest within the Chongón-Colonche Mountains of coastal Ecuador. Survey and data recovered from eight archaeological sites containing stone structures located alongside Las Tusas River drainage suggest a specific mode of adaptation and settlement pattern that left a particular landscape signature. The survey was conducted by the Florida Atlantic University Archaeological Fieldschool in Ecuador during the...